


Fever Dreams of Broken Things

by LandOfMistAndSecrets



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Azure Moon Route, Canon-Typical Violence, Fever Dreams, M/M, Mid-Timeskip, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:28:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21825943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LandOfMistAndSecrets/pseuds/LandOfMistAndSecrets
Summary: There's a sometimes hero, sometimes villain roaming around the countryside, and whether it's his missing prince or not, Felix isn't about to let a little thing like illness stop him from finding out.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 12
Kudos: 261





	Fever Dreams of Broken Things

“He’s getting worse,” he heard Ingrid whisper, her voice a raw, scraping wound, bleeding concern for him. Felix kept himself perfectly still in his pile of sweaty, stinking furs beside the fire and hoped silently for them to assume his lack of response meant that he was still asleep. 

Sylvain’s response was quieter and wordless, too, a non committal sort of humming grunt that could have been agreement, but more likely was simply Sylvain hoping Ingrid would interpret the sound to mean whatever she wanted to hear. Which was agreement. Which was as good as agreeing, wasn’t it? 

_Coward,_ Felix thought, uncharitably. Ingrid sighed, as though echoing the sentiment. Something cold settled on an exposed bit of Felix’s face, and he fluttered his eyes open, annoyed. 

Snow was falling on their little forest camp, filtering in through the high canopy overhead. _Seasoning,_ Felix thought, darkly, and then abruptly he wondered why he wasn’t cold. If anything, he was too warm, nested down in that pile of furs like some sort of novice in the wild. These blankets weren’t all his. Some of them must have been Sylvain’s, or Ingrid’s, or both of theirs, donated to his cause because they couldn’t help but baby him, like always. He struggled free, pushing his arms out into the open, emerging like some larval insect from its trappings. 

Ingrid looked at him. Ah. Right. He’d been eavesdropping, hadn’t he? So much for that. 

“Hey,” Sylvain said, turning his head to look at him, too. “How’re you feeling? Nice and rested, no doubt. Good as new?” 

Felix shivered, but he still didn’t feel especially cold. He pressed his hands to his face, eyebrows knit, and then Ingrid was approaching him and wearing such a sympathetic expression, too, he couldn’t help but glare. 

“Here,” she said, handing him a canteen. It was half slush inside and painfully cold down his throat, but he managed two long swallows before he started coughing. She took it away and pressed her hand to his forehead, like he was five years old again and she was his nurse. He made a thin sound of protest, which she predictably ignored. “I’m no healer,” she said, “but I know a fever as well as anyone. We should go back. If we start now, we can make it back to town before the roads get too bad, in this weather.” 

“We’re not going _back,_ ” Felix rasped at her, glaring still. His throat felt dry, again, which was ridiculous, because he’d just downed half of Ingrid’s canteen.

“Felix…” Sylvain said, cautiously. “You know I’m always ready to side against Ingrid just sort of on principle, but...” 

“Very funny,” Ingrid said. 

“There’s nothing to find there,” Felix insisted. “He’s already moved on. We’ll lose the trail. We can’t go back.” There was only forward, now and in all things. On and on and on. He pulled one of the sour smelling blankets back up around him, daring her with his eyes to argue. 

“Felix,” she sighed. “The warrior those people talked about… he might not even be real. These are difficult times. People invent heroes. What they saw and what they _said_ they saw aren’t necessarily the same thing.” 

“Don’t lecture me about inventing heroes,” Felix snapped at her, and he was rewarded almost instantly by a flash of hurt on her face, just before she wiped her expression carefully free of emotion and tightened her jaw at him, like she could take it back through sheer stubborn will alone.

“She’s right, though,” Sylvain chimed in, hands behind his head, snowflakes melting in his hair. “Come on, Felix. A haggard old giant, ten feet tall and half as broad, taking out an imperial strike force with just himself and a few green villagers wielding steak knives and pitchforks? I don’t know _what_ happened here, I’m not saying I do, but -- come on. Does that sound like Dimitri, to you?” 

Felix blinked at him. He was wearing one of his practiced masks of cheerful innocence, shoulders slightly hunched in half a shrug, his lips upturned in half a wry smile that said _what are you gonna do?_

He turned back to Ingrid. “They said he took a man by the throat and crushed the life out of him, needing only the one hand to do so,” he said. “That he tossed the corpse aside with its head near twisted off entirely.”

Ingrid looked away. He saw her swallow, as though to keep down rising bile. He knew the feeling well. 

“Isn’t that what they said?” he pressed. 

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. 

“We were all thinking it,” Felix said. Exhaustion ran over him in a great, engulfing wave, and he slumped back down into the blankets, shivering. “It doesn’t sound particularly heroic.” 

“He saved that village,” Ingrid said, and he couldn’t help it -- he laughed, quiet and derisive, until it dissolved into a fit of coughing, instead. Ingrid stood and walked stiffly back to the fire, snowflakes swirling behind her, catching in the fur lining of her cape. When he finally caught his breath, again, Felix slumped back down into his little sour smelling pile and pulled the blankets up to his chin, shivering. Damn the weather. 

“We should go back,” Ingrid repeated, quietly, keeping her back to him. “We don’t know if we’re following after friend or foe, out here, and Felix is looking worse by the hour.” 

“Sure,” Sylvain agreed, leaning back against the tree trunk he was propped against, shrugging expansively. “So, do you want to tie him up, or shall I?” 

Ingrid sighed, long and loud. “You’re both impossible,” she said. 

Felix pulled one of the blankets up over his head, muffling their voices. The situation wasn’t nearly as dire as she made it seem. And they were close, so close. He could feel it. Somewhere nearby, beneath these very same trees… 

He closed his eyes. 

_Must have been ten feet tall,_ that pale-faced, haggard-eyed farmer had said, pointing them away from his village, along the winding road into the trees. Felix could picture his face clearly. He’d been wounded in the battle, the bandage fresh above his eyes. _Saved all our lives, he did. Empire comes marching up into our land calling us rebels, what can we do but fight? We’re good Fraldarius men and women to the last, my lord, and that’s the Goddess’s own truth._

They should have had knights to spare to protect them, but the truth was, they were losing the war. 

One man wouldn’t change that. 

*

Hoofbeats woke him, hard and heavy and approaching fast. 

Instinct took over. His eyes popped open, and he heard Ingrid, first, somewhere nearby -- “Get _up_ , both of you, riders approaching --” and whatever else she said was swallowed up entirely by the sound of pegasus wings, beating furiously.

Felix reached for his sword. He found it nearby. He pushed out of his cocoon of blankets and stumbled clumsily to his feet, shocked at how unsteady he was, at the way the world around him swam and he nearly fell back on his own ass in the dirt. 

Sylvain caught his shoulder. “Felix,” he said, sounding serious as he never did. “Come on. Get up with me. Can you ride? Or at least -- hold on?” 

Shouts in the distance, but nearer every moment. 

Felix’s heart sank. These were not friendly riders approaching. 

Most likely, it was the same Empire army that had tried and failed to press into Fraldarius lands through the village at their backs. Edelgard had no shortage of troops to smash against far more formidable foes; they should have seen this coming. 

“ _Felix_ ,” Sylvain said, urgently, shoving him forward. 

“I can ride,” Felix said, though the truth was he didn’t think he could. He could barely stand. Sylvain nodded, and in seconds he was mounted astride that massive war horse of his and reaching down to help Felix do the same. 

“Up,” he hissed. 

Felix took his hand. 

“Meet back at the village,” Ingrid called, shouting over her pegasus, and then she was gone, up through a hole in the canopy to race the Empire back to the border. As though they had any chance at all, the three of them with Felix in this state. 

But they would try. 

Felix realized, as he tightened his arms around Sylvain and leaned forward against him, head swimming, that they were going to miss their chance, after all. They’d never heard of the man they were chasing -- _Dimitri,_ he insisted to himself, fiercely -- they had never heard of him appearing in the same place, twice. He kept constantly on the move. He wouldn’t go back to save that village a second time, and they would lose his trail while they tried to do the impossible in his stead. 

“Hang on tight, Felix,” Sylvain warned him, kicking them forward into a rough gallop. It was unkind terrain to be astride in the first place, but Felix wasn’t a strong rider in the best of circumstances. He practically bounced in the saddle. “This is gonna be rough, but we’ll get you back. Hang on!” 

He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to go _back._ He didn’t want to lose the trail again, wander lost for another six months, hoping, praying for some new whisper to point them in a direction, clinging to almost nothing to fuel their fading hope -- 

Riders burst through the trees at their backs. Felix didn’t see them, didn’t dare to turn and try and look, but he _heard_ them, and he heard the way Sylvain swore, too. Sylvain yanked viciously at the reins and cut a sharp turn, his stallion foaming and protesting but ultimately obeying, hooves pounding the uneven forest floor. One wrong move and they’d kill the beast and break their own necks in the process, too.

Felix grit his teeth. Something sang by his right ear, too fast to be anything but an arrow, and for the first time, cold fear settled into his guts. This was the Empire, all right. He could have laughed. He wondered what Edelgard would think of her army cutting down three of the most valuable hostages she could have asked for without asking a single question, first, because they were embarrassed about failing to take an insignificant border village. Pathetic. They were losing to this? 

“Felix,” Sylvain panted, glancing back at him. “We’re going to cut through off the path, all right? Hold tight.” 

It was a measure of how worried Sylvain actually was that he hadn’t made a single joke so far, Felix thought, faintly. All this talk about riding and holding tight and all the rest, it ought to have been insufferable. His guts clenched, and a wave of dizzy nausea hit him, hard. He opened his mouth to warn Sylvain -- _I don’t think I can hold on much longer_ \-- but Sylvain was already turning them, sending them diving into the thick underbrush between the trees, forcing them over dangerous terrain in the hopes that the Empire would deem one rider not worth the risk of pursuing. 

Shouts followed at their backs, and another arrow shot wide around them, slamming into a tree ahead of them with an audible _thunk._

They broke through a clump of reeds and exploded out beside a fast moving stream, and Sylvain turned them again to race down the length of it along the bank, no doubt scanning for a safe place to cross. Felix left him to it, eyes shut tight, focusing on nothing but the increasingly difficult task of _hanging on._

More shouts, more hooves slamming into the dirt, more swearing from Sylvain. Another sharp turn, hooves splashing in the water, and Felix opened his eyes just in time to see what Sylvain saw -- a rocky little sand bar connecting their side of the bank to a sharp incline on the opposite side. The horse followed commands, fairly leaping across the sandbar, the steep bank rising up at them through the undergrowth, and the animal let out a furious scream as it reared up to clear it, too. Felix sucked in a breath, clinging tight, but his legs were like jelly, whether from fear or illness or both, and he felt himself lurch to one side -- 

\-- Heard Sylvain shout for him, shrill and terrified -- 

And then he was falling, arms shot out to ward his landing. He hit the incline and rolled, the impact knocking the breath from his lungs, and when he finally spun to a stop it was all he could do to suck in a breath, wheezing. He could see the sky, he realized, gazing up at the strip of blue-grey above, cutting a path through the canopy just as the stream cut a path through the trees. 

He reached for his sword with nerveless hands. Found rocks and dirt and freezing water, trickling over his fingers. He sucked in another breath, heard more shouts at his back. Horses. His fingers closed around a rough, wet stone, and he laughed, breathlessly up at the sky. He’d go down fighting, he thought. He’d fight them to his very last breath. 

Splashing behind him. He struggled to sit up, to face his own death. He refused to die on his back! 

“This one’s still alive,” a woman spoke, her accent southern and tinged with disgust. “Hold. That armor doesn’t say farmer’s son, to me.” 

Felix laughed. It hurt, terribly. He staggered to his feet, and turned. 

She was nothing special, really. She gripped her spear too tight, like a novice, and her armor was ill fitting, second or third issue and clearly not custom made. Inherited or assigned. It was almost insulting, that he was destined to fall against such an ultimately unworthy opponent. 

He hoped, at least, that Sylvain had the good sense to keep going. 

“Who are you?” the Empire soldier demanded of him. “Are you in league with the man they’re calling the Beast King?”

“The Beast King,” Felix sneered, with bravado he certainly didn’t feel. He felt rather like he might piss down his own leg into the water, just before he died. How very noble. He snarled at her. “That’s right. Though I know him as the boar prince. Dimitri. The King of Lions, and make no mistake -- he’ll kill you all.” 

And here he was, dizzy and feverish and unarmed save for the paltry little stone cutting into his palm from the creek, and still, _still_ this fully armed and armored empire soldier took a full step back. He could see the whites of her eyes, deep inside her helmet. 

“You’re telling me that man is Prince Dimitri?” she gasped. “Prince Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd?” 

Felix said nothing. He barely kept his feet. The world was swimming, again. He growled at her. “If you’re going to kill me, hurry up and be done with it.” He refused to die on his back. 

She leveled her spear at him, and he really did almost piss himself. Shit. “If you can bring me Prince Dimitri, you’re too valuable to kill.” 

His legs gave out. He fell onto his knees, splashing into the water. 

“ _Felix!_ ” Sylvain’s voice rang, echoing through the trees, in the distance. 

The woman before him made a decision. “You’re coming with me,” she said. She reached forward, grabbing him roughly by the collar, fisting her gauntleted hand in the fabric. Wool and linen stretched, seams creaking. “Get _up,_ ” she snarled at him, yanking him forward. Something tore beneath his coat with an awful ripping sound. He slumped forward, and quite suddenly and unceremoniously vomited all over her boots. She made a dismayed sound, dancing back.

He was going to die here, he thought, distantly. If this woman didn’t spear him through, she’d leave him to drown in six inches of water and his own fucking sick, swirling through it. Lovely. 

A shadow fell over him from behind, and he sighed, relief and annoyance both thrumming through him. Or Sylvain would come back and save him, apparently. Idiot. It was sheer luck that only this one soldier had stopped to pursue him this far.

Said soldier stepped back, readying her spear. “Goddess above,” she gasped, as something -- someone -- heavy splashed into the stream at Felix’s back. 

“There is no Goddess, here,” that someone -- _not_ Sylvain _\--_ spoke, low and threatening, with a voice like churning gravel.

“The Beast King,” the woman whispered, her boots splashing as she stepped back, back, back. Felix hadn’t the strength to even raise his chin and look.

“Indeed. And you’re just some dead woman,” the man, beast, _thing_ at Felix’s back said, cold and perfunctory. Shadows shifted. Water splashed up beside him, drenching him, and Felix’s teeth chattered as he sank numb, freezing fingers into the rocky sand at the bottom of the stream. If his arms gave out, he’d drown. Pathetic. 

Weapons clashed, metal screeching on metal. The woman screamed, once, and there was a heavy sound, a sickening, organic _crunch._ A faint, inhuman grunt. A splash, upstream, and then blood, swirling in the water, curling around his wrists. 

More than just his teeth chattered, now. His whole body shook, violently, head to toe. He couldn’t feel his hands, his knees, his legs, his arms up to the elbows, he couldn’t feel a thing. He wondered if he’d gone ahead and pissed himself, yet. He was going to die here, drown in his own excrement and someone else’s blood, and he couldn’t bring himself to feel a single thing about it.

 _Felix,_ he thought he heard Sylvain call, again. Closer. Not close enough. That shadow fell over him again, blotting out the sun.

“Kill me, then,” he said, through chattering teeth, shaking like a leaf. 

“Why would I do that?” the creature standing before him said, sounding, of all things, genuinely bewildered. And, his voice -- that voice, he thought, as his arms gave out, and he splashed forward into the cold, wet black -- 

How tiresome, to be plagued so with ghosts on the very step of death’s door. 

*

Snow was falling. He could feel it with some sixth sense all Faerghus born children had. He opened his mouth and his breath misted in front of his face. 

On days like these, he would slip from his bed and roam the halls in his nightclothes, slippered feet whispering his passage down, down, all the way down to the kitchens where the knights congregated in loud bunches and cheered his inevitable appearance. _Little Lord Felix,_ they beamed at him, clapping him on the back. _Stand aside, now, lads, the little lord needs his mug of comfort just as much as we do. On days like these…_

 _Days like these…_

He struggled to rise from his bed, but the blankets piled atop him were too heavy. He made a thin sound, an ineffective whine. 

“You have a fever,” a voice beside him said, gravely, and his mind took the words and turned a corner with them, wandering the halls of his memory. 

_You shouldn’t get out of bed._

_But I want to!_

_You have a fever, Felix. You’re very sick._

_But I want to see Dimitri!_

_If you see the prince like this, you might pass it on to him, next. You wouldn’t want to make him sick, too, would you?_

He’d cried, of course. 

He’d burst into tears on the spot, sobbing like his heart was breaking, and for a six year old, he supposed it had been. He’d had snot running down his face and tears dripping into the bedsheets and sweat running down his forehead and his neck and his back and he’d fisted his little hands into the bedcovers and wailed and wailed and wailed, because it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair. 

Glenn had touched his hair and ran a cloth over his forehead and sighed and shook his head and left him there, because he had to greet the prince, and no, it wasn’t fair.

“It isn’t fair,” he heard himself say, aloud, barely a murmur. 

A rustle of cloth beside him. “You need a healer,” that same voice spoke, rough and low and not quite familiar… but not quite not. “A proper physician, for this.” Felix furrowed his brow. Squirmed in his bed. Whimpered and whined against the weight of the blankets. They made hot chocolate, on days like this, and he had to meet Dimitri, because Glenn… Glenn… 

Glenn was dead, he recalled, with startling clarity. 

Tears welled up before he remembered, he didn’t cry like that, anymore. He swallowed the sob that tried to escape him, and wondered, in a burst of stunning crystal clear lucidity, just where the hell he was, right now. 

“Isn’t that you?” he demanded, angry and imperious, because he remembered, now, that Glenn was dead and everything was different, now. 

A soft, quiet laugh, rumbling in the dark. And it _was_ dark. He was cold. The blankets were piled so high atop him he couldn’t move, and he was shivering still, freezing cold. 

“I’m no healer,” the voice said, very softly. “But I know a few tricks. I’ve survived this long, after all… in a manner of speaking.” Cloth rustling, metal sounds. 

Felix swallowed -- or tried to. His mouth was dry. “Where am I?” he asked, in a voice that was small and lost and scared. He hated the sound of it. 

“Lost in the woods,” the voice replied. “A little lone wolf in a lion’s den.” 

“There are no lions, anymore,” he whispered, and those tears threatened him again, pressing at the back of his eyes, and he didn’t know why. Only that he refused to let them fall. No tears, anymore. No more tears, not for anyone, not for anything. Things were different, now. 

“Perhaps not,” the voice agreed. 

Satisfied that he’d won the debate, Felix let his head fall back and his eyes fall closed, just for a moment. 

*

He was shivering, cold. His head was too big for his shoulders. Stuffed up with cotton and feathers, like a great big goose down pillow. _You’ve got snot on your face,_ Glenn would tell him. _Hold still._ But the cloth he used was cold and it burned against the sensitive skin of his stupid leaky nose, and he’d shake his head and cry about it, big fat tears rolling down his face. _You’re getting too big for me to carry,_ Glenn would warn him, but he’d do it anyway, letting Felix cling onto his back. _You should have taken the carriage,_ he’d complain, but Felix would shake his head, because the carriage was too slow.

He breathed, slowly, in and out, his head throbbing at his temples. His body ached and shivered and shook. 

He realized, faintly, with a little wry touch of wonder, that he was very, very sick. 

“Felix,” a voice sighed at his side. He turned his head -- it took all the effort he had in him -- and his eyes met with a dark shirt over a broad chest. The rest of the man stood over him, out of sight. His voice was… not unfamiliar. He couldn’t place it. He made a sound, a thin, whining, questioning sort of hum through his runny nose. 

A hand touched his forehead, moving his hair aside, warm and big and more like his father’s than Glenn’s, resting there, considering what it found there. But the voice wasn’t his father’s. Far from it. The voice was… the voice, it was so much like… 

“Dimitri?” he whispered, softly, squeezing his eyes shut. Dimitri was dead. Dimitri was locked up in a prison tower, alone among his enemies, shut away with nothing but his own damned ghosts for company while his father and their allies argued and minced and made excuses for why they couldn’t just march on the damned capital, already, march through the gates of Fhirdiad and take it back, march on the tower and rescue their rightful king before, before -- 

Before they killed him? They already had. 

That hand lifted away from his face, and Felix reached up, whimpering, catching it in his own weak and trembling fingers to hold it close. “Dimitri,” he said again. “Tell me. Tell me if you’re my Dimitri.” 

“No,” the voice said, sadly. 

Felix dropped his hands with a breath that caught in the back of his throat, hitching horribly, and nodded. “Because he’s dead,” he said, dully.

“Not dead,” the voice said. “Not yet. But gone? Yes.”

“I said I’d save him,” Felix said. “I said I’d bring him back. No matter what. No matter _what_ , do you hear me?” 

“I hear you,” said the voice. “But I’m telling you… he’s gone, Felix. You ought to let him go.” 

Felix bared his teeth up at nothing, chattering in the dark. “Go f-fuck yourself,” he shivered, quivering under the blankets. “What do you know. Who are you. Where am I?” 

A quiet laugh, like stones grinding in a mixer. “Nothing. No one. Nowhere. You’re very sick, Felix. Go back to sleep.” 

_I won’t,_ he thought, viciously, but he was already halfway there, wavering in and out of consciousness, his face suspiciously wet, his tears a half-remembered, wholly shameful secret in the dark. 

*

There was a bitter taste in his mouth. 

Medicine, he thought. Tea from the south. He choked around it and his stomach roiled, but he kept it down, if only because his body couldn’t quite muster up the strength to even properly be sick. 

There was that hand on his forehead, again. 

He couldn’t help but think it felt familiar. 

*

“You used to read me stories,” he mumbled, cold and miserable, thinking far, far back. 

“Glenn used to read you stories,” his caretaker rumbled. “Knights and lords and ladies, and such.” 

“You used to let me share your bed,” he tried again. “You held my hand and told me we’d always be together.” 

“...Yes,” he said, slowly, and Felix grinned around a surge of triumph in his chest. 

“I swore the vows,” he said. “I said the words. You had nightmares. So did I. I liked it best when you’d hold me so tight I could barely breathe.” 

“Even then,” his caretaker mused, with a dry, aching laugh. “Night terrors. I did not know what true terror was.” 

“I swore I’d be your shield,” Felix breathed. “Your sword. Everything you needed. Anything you wanted.” 

“And I did appreciate that, at the time.” 

“Dimitri,” Felix said, desperately, fighting the blankets, reaching out. “Dimitri…” 

Strong hands found his, and a quiet sigh rumbled through the space between them. Felix squeezed them tight, his breathing fast and shallow, his heart like a hummingbird in his chest. 

“Your fever’s broken,” he said, his voice so familiar. “I don’t… think you’ll die. That was the last of what I had, but I will find more. I won’t die, either, Felix. I can’t. Come whatever may, I must live to see the end of this.” Those fingers tightened around him, his grip painfully strong. “I’m sorry.” 

“You’re not dead,” Felix breathed, wonder and relief and the lingering effects of his sickness all conspiring to make his head swim. He swallowed, hard. “Dimitri… Dimitri. Come home with me. I’ll do anything. Anything, you understand? I’ll do anything, be anything. Your sword, your shield. Your friend. I’ll be your fucking _knight_ , if you’ll have me, I’ll swear the vows, I’ll say them all again. Dimitri... “ he hissed, softly. That grip on his hands was so tight, he feared his fingers might all break. He’d never swing a sword again. 

It would be worth it, if it brought Dimitri home. 

But his prince said nothing, breathing heavily beside him, panting like the beast he pretended to be. 

“I’m so sorry,” he said, and he let him go. 

“Dimitri,” Felix called after him, desperately struggling to sit up. His head swam. His fingers ached. A fire burned low in one corner of this hole he was in, this makeshift shelter, burned down to dully glowing embers. “Come home,” he called, voice hoarse and croaking, chasing after him. “Come _home_ , damn you!” 

He pulled himself out of that bed, that pile of stinking furs and rotting wool and underbrush, and fell to his knees on a soft, loamy floor. Where was he? Where were they? 

“Dimitri,” he said, weakly, crawling forward in the dirt, laboring on hands and knees out from beneath the ceiling of their shelter and into the dim light of the forest. 

He sat up. Blinked. An overturned cart in a clearing, thick with fresh fallen snow. If there were any roads to or from here, they were buried beneath that. Bits of metal gleamed here and there -- a helmet there, a breastplate, Empire colors, all of it -- and there, a gauntlet, and there, another corpse, torn half apart. Far afield, barely visible through the trees, a body slumped against a clump of dead stumps, and between him and it were littered bits of armor that may or may not have still contained limbs. The dark stains that Felix had taken first for old mud recontextualized, and he realized all at once just how much blood there was, spilled in this secret space around him.

And the _smell._

It drifted to him on the wind, sickeningly sweet, meat left to rot in the few hours each day that weren’t below freezing. How long had they been here? 

How long had _he --?_

He pulled himself up to his knees, retching. 

He emptied his stomach of what little it contained -- water and acid -- and heaved again, and again, though there was nothing left to give. When he was finished, when he pulled himself back together, shivering, he realized he was no longer alone. 

He turned his face up. “Dimitri,” he practically wailed up at him, pathetically, reaching out for him on his knees. He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t fucking _dead._ So long as he wasn’t dead -- 

“I’m so sorry,” his terrible, beautiful, vicious and mad and wonderful and _alive_ prince said to him, standing over him amidst his copse of corpses, sounding so very, very sad. Felix opened his mouth, to scream, to argue, to yell at him until his throat gave out, raw and bleeding, but Dimitri moved first, too fast to react, too quick to even register what had happened. One moment, he was sucking in a breath, the next, he was pitching over with an insensate groan and a lump the size of his fist growing on the back of his head. 

Of course, he wouldn’t see that until later. 

Much later, when he woke with Ingrid kneeling over him, tears falling from her eyes and onto his face as she pushed him over and he gaped up open-mouthed both at her stunned, crumpled expression and behind her, the bright midday sun. 

Much, much later, when Sylvain slung his arm under his and bore the brunt of his weight, dragging him out of the muddy field they’d found him in and into the town he thought they’d left behind. 

So very much later, when a healer he didn’t know dragged her hand over the back of his head and he gasped aloud, pain lancing all through him, and she winced in sympathy and told him those Empire sorts were right brutes, and he was lucky to be alive. 

He didn’t respond. 

Not to that healer, when she asked him what had happened. 

Not to Ingrid, when she asked him where he’d been, what he’d seen, where he’d gone, what he’d done. 

Not to Sylvain, when he met his eyes and shook his head and simply asked him -- _Was it him?_

Not to them, and not to anyone. 

What the hell was he supposed to say? 

*

He’d been sick, he told himself. 

Delirious. Half out of his mind. He didn’t know what he’d seen. He couldn’t trust his memories. He couldn’t answer their questions because he didn’t know, himself. 

But he knew he’d never stop searching, because if he didn’t _know_ \-- 

If he didn’t know, for absolute _certain --_

It meant there was still a chance.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on twitter: [@landofsmthsmth](https://twitter.com/landofsmthsmth)


End file.
